The movement sparks tension in his body, a coiling of muscle even as Louis holds his place. Still here, body at rest, as Lestat says this thing and Louis feels his own defensiveness rising in return.
"Not saying that," Louis answers. Thinking about how they might hurt each other, again.
Is a fight going to heal what Louis fractured? Doubtful. Louis suspects it will tear a jagged wound into them both, too deep to stitch up properly.
Louis looks away, briefly. Jaw tightening, flexing around the first angry thing he wants to say.
Lestat keeps his arms loosely folded around himself once settled again, but closes his hands tighter. Like all he would like to do is reach for Louis in the wake of that little tense tic to his expression, of still soft words. Would like to pull him into his coffin, hold him, be held.
Aches for that. Like maybe it's at the core of all his stupid attempts for contact, for bites and fucking and whatever Louis might give him. Ugh, he can't stand himself.
"But I want you there," comes out anyway, thick with renewed feeling, renewed tears. "I don't know what I'm doing when I know you aren't watching."
Weeks spent being so, so angry. Being resentful and aching and miserable, all of these things at once, and then Lestat gives a little, just a little, and Louis can feel himself relenting.
Or at least, leaning into the space this easing creates between them to give a little back.
"I wanna be here."
What else can he say? This is the truth.
"I want it too much."
A miserable flex of expression, almost a smile. Louis wants too much. Lestat of all people knows how that's liable to become something Louis shies away from. Something that becomes a thing he blames himself for.
He thought he could have it both ways. Have his distance, and have Lestat near too. But it feels impossible now, knowing what he knows. Knowing that it's just so easy to reach out and touch Lestat, to pin him down again.
Knowing that it would be temporary, when Louis wants it to be anything else.
Misery reflected back at him from his own crumpled position and posture, no smiles, the bleary upset at the words too much, as if Louis is somehow applying them to Lestat as a mirror of his own longing, wanting what he should not, which,
well, maybe so.
There is a silence after, also miserable, before he offers, "I didn't sleep with the photographer," for what it's worth.
Rolls slightly in his position to skim a tearful gaze up at the ceiling, a hand drifting to rub along his forehead, hairline, and then flop there to rest as if the idea of engaging muscle to resettle himself is too much to ask of him. "I only said it," he says, trying to iron out the quiver in his voice, "because I thought you wanted me to."
Louis believes him. Remembers Lestat, tearful, snapping: Why do you make me say these things? and has had time to think on it.
That's an old game they play together. Old, old as their love. Louis baiting Lestat into the very worst behaviors, winding them both up to Louis can give in to him, give into wanting him.
Over a hundred years old, and there is still this defect in him, this shame. This part of Louis that wants to be wrestled into what he desires so he can absolve himself of all his shame. More complicated now, maybe, but not far removed from those early days. Looking at Lestat, feeling how desperately jealous he is now of anyone who had ever touched him, remembering the dizzying heights of desire he'd felt in the dressing room—
"I might've."
The right step in the game they were almost playing, before it became painful. Before Louis got too far into his head about all the realities of their situation.
"I didn't figure out I couldn't do it that way anymore until we started."
A strange combination of feeling. First, an internal sense of collapse, the remote viewing of yet another possibility between them being demolished. Second, something else. Like a muscle held tense, relaxing. Louis had begun something and then realised he did not want it and then did not pursue it. This is
a good thing, he thinks. Louis, protecting himself. Protecting them both. And also, not fucking with him for no reason. The ways it had felt like a strange punishment, and now doesn't.
Lestat nods his understanding. A little like defeat, but an acceptance of it.
Pointless to try to hold back tears when he is already in them, but he does his best at sounding reasonable when he asks, "Are you going to stay away for the rest?" The shows in New Orleans. The tour entire. Their lifetimes. Louis can take his pick.
All those tour dates. All that lies beyond his tour, the kind of stardom that is already glowing around Lestat each time he steps on stage.
"I don't want to."
A starting point. Maybe the most important thing, yes? Saying that he wants to be here. Saying aloud what Louis had thought they both knew.
"But I think I'm fucking it up for you," Louis says softly. "And I don't wanna do that."
Lestat deserves all of this. Louis knows how much Lestat loves music, and remembers how he had thrived on a stage. He'd been right to be angry at Louis, in his dressing room, starting things, wanting too much.
Near whispered, this protest. Another renewed grip to the edge of the coffin, Lestat finally pulling himself up to sit. A leaning forwards without permitting himself to actually make contact, hands anchored to the coffin edge, to the side of his own knee.
"It's mine to fuck up," he says, a little tinge of watery humour. "But even if it were you, there isn't—" His voice hitching, some exasperation in the way he catches his breath. "There isn't any purpose to it if you're not there. At least when you can be. When I know you will be waiting for me, that night or the next."
Maybe it's the same show over and over and Louis would not wish to attend it all the time. Not quite, at least. Different sets, songs swapped in and out, little spontaneous happenings, but it's the same tour, certainly. But if Louis were to quietly read a book in a backstage lounge to meet him after, that would be fine too.
It matters to Louis that they stand apart from each other. Painful, but important.
But Lestat sits up, eyes wet, and tells Louis these things, gives him this mirror of his own longing. Wanting, and wanting, and wanting. And then beyond that, here is the very core of what Louis misses, yearns for: the link between them, the meaning it brings to every part of their lives.
Louis says nothing right away. The words settle between them. Tears slip down Lestat's face.
Slowly, slowly, Louis lifts a hand to lightly knuckle away a fresh spill of red from his cheek. And this small touch slips from the barest contact to Louis cupping his face, fingertips along the line of his jaw as his thumb strokes the cut of Lestat's cheekbone.
Some sound, strangled, in his throat, and Lestat leans into that touch, hand coming up to press against Louis', keep it there.
Louis is going to tell him that they part ways properly. And Lestat will have to figure it out. Will have to test the truth of his statement, and find that there is at least one other purpose to the tour, to continue to piss off the vampiric world, to split its focus. That, at least, might sustain them for the east coast leg, maybe beyond it.
Or he could beg him not to go. There's still time. Still some pride to burn, against all odds. For now, settles in the silence rather than give into the urge to trample all over it.
They could stay here, and Louis could touch him this way, and they can toss aside every other complicated part of this conversation. Of what they are trying to reason their way through. Of what Louis is trying to work his way towards.
But Louis owes him an answer. It's almost a foregone conclusion. How could Louis stay away? Another eighty years in exile? No. Neither of them could withstand it.
Lestat says nothing. Only makes a shattering sort of sound. Louis feels it under his palm.
It draws Louis in to him. He leans their foreheads together. Noses bump, brush. Louis exhales, inhales a deep breath, inhales Lestat, washed clean of arenas and stadiums and strange mortals.
The kiss is almost an exhale when it comes, a feather-light brush of lips to Lestat's mouth. Giving in. Choosing. Uncertain of exactly what, only that they have tried other options and they haven't worked.
Wholly unexpected, that gentle brush of a kiss. Lestat going still, turning his chin down from it for a moment where he tries to see what is in Louis' eyes, his expression.
Doesn't matter too much, when there is only one thing he can and wants to do, which is slip back into that fractional space and kiss him in return. Still gentle and soft, tentative, as if asking: did Louis mean to do so? Is it good and allowed, that Lestat do it again?
He'd been so clumsy, in retrospect, whenever Louis permitted intimacy. Grasping, grabbing, desperate. Determined, in this moment, to be patient. Maybe it will last.
He wants to say a thousand things, ask a thousand questions. For now—
Hesitance mellowing into familiar ease. They had spent so much time kissing, Louis remembers. Still remembers how it had led all things with them, how Louis had chosen him without any words at all, only by taking his face into his hands and kissing Lestat. This moment feels like an echo, like a continuation. Louis kisses him, hand gentle over Lestat's cheek as the kiss deepens.
They should have done this first. (Louis wasn't ready. He might still not be ready.) Maybe it would have been easier to throw Lestat around the room, touch him, fuck him, if they had something tender first.
Lestat is easily led. Louis coaxes his mouth open. Keeps his hand there caught beneath Lestat's. Kisses him for an eternity. For who knows how long.
And stays there, forehead resting against his, breathing together. Listening to twinned heartbeats, still keeping perfect time together after so long apart, so much discord, so much misalignment.
Lestat is easily led, parting his mouth. Receptive to the careful tasting it invites, and gently returns it. And they could be anywhere, in the distant past when they were happiest, or an unnamed future where they manage it again, or in a church full of blood and fire, or a decorated ballroom and knowing it could be the last time, and then it was true.
And now it isn't. The hand keeping Louis' in place slips further down, resting light at his wrist, encouraging without demand. His other has found a place to rest at Louis' other arm, fingers more yielding than grabbing. Like holding a butterfly, where nothing you can do will stop it from flying away without destroying it.
Relaxes a little, at least bodily. Listing into the side of his coffin, resting there against Louis, soaking in these moments of gentle contact with the same relief he had felt when Louis had found him, taken him into his arms.
A last light peck, a kiss brushed to the corner of his mouth. Can't help it. Old habit, that little kiss. Attention paid to the scar, one of the few blemishes carried over from Lestat's mortal life.
Louis used to thumb over it. Each time he cradled Lestat's face, he'd set his thumb there, guide him into a kiss.
A passing urge to do only that. Kiss him until someone came to fetch Lestat, and Louis had to—
Go?
It's the question he must decide. That Lestat had been asking.
"I can't stay away from you," he whispers. Amends to, "I don't want to. But I gotta spend a little time on my own. I ain't good for you this way. I'm still trying to figure out what's mine and what I gotta throw away."
He should say, no one else kisses his scar. Touches it. They ignore it, like to do otherwise might offend him. He has noticed.
But Louis is talking and Lestat is listening, which he hopes is the correct thing to do, even as he does it with big glittering wet eyes that betray a propensity to hurt his own feelings on something. When Louis finishes his part, Lestat lowers his gaze to absorb it better. Can't stay away, don't want to, gotta.
Shifts aside, resting his jaw and cheek on Louis' shoulder, looking out unseeing at the room. The unpacked luggage, the fluttering curtain. A little time on his own, Louis says. Lestat feels as though his heart is bleeding out into his chest, blood settling in his belly.
Feels like a fair question, even for all the ways Louis has withheld, veiled the extent to which Armand had—
Changed him. Louis has been changed. (Does not assign any other word to their life together.) Nearly eighty years, and what is left of Louis? What is his? What had been planted in him? What is a defect in Louis, one he came by honestly, and need excise?
Who is he without Armand? Without Lestat? Without either of them?
Hesitantly, Louis threads fingers into Lestat's hair. Strokes down his scalp to his nape and back again as Lestat rests his head. As Louis puts this question to him.
Louis, stating he needs something. It's hard to deny him anything, and this is true of things that run counter to what Lestat desires most. He could throw a tantrum, or just open his mouth and let everything he wishes to say tumble out. How desperately alone he feels. How he can make things better for Louis, including himself. How fearful he is of another eighty years slipping by.
Can't feel soothed for the hand in his hair, though he wants to be. Still, it's nice enough to linger. Washed of products and, to his eye, a little lank for it. To touch, though, the mix of strawberry blonde and platinum highlights are softer than usual.
Shifts. Balances his chin there on Louis' shoulder. "What do you need, mon cher?"
It sparks such a complicated rush of feeling. Affection for how easy Lestat offers it. Misery, for how it confirms what Louis knows he needs.
If they lean into each other, Louis will take all of the wreckage and let it calcify. It'd be so easy to just be with Lestat, to be all broken pieces and grow into him, never excavate what eighty years away had made of him.
Here, now, Louis allows himself the luxury of his fingers in Lestat's hand. He can still taste him.
"I don't know myself anymore," Louis whispers. "I got back all these pieces of myself and I don't know where they fit."
The first time Louis has said this aloud in so many words. Has spun for fight to fight, amassing wealth, artwork, flexing his own power, but in the wake of it all there's this. Uncertainty. Wreckage.
"I just need time. Can't be anyone's companion this way."
Anyone's. Might as well say Lestat. Daniel would be exasperated, rolling his eyes about Louis leaving this open-ended as if there's anyone else.
It makes him shiver, just once, the non-impossibility of Louis finding someone else as he finds himself. Someone without all this history and pain and disaster, someone who doesn't toy with him or need him so desperately he could dissolve into ash. It all feels too far away for Lestat to get his jaws around now. Maybe later.
Let me help, he wishes he could say. Don't burn anything, but let me help. Lestat, feeling at times like a man on his knees in the wilderness, hands cupped around a struggling flame, willing it to live, to burn brighter. Louis who needs time, not him. His desperate love.
"I know you," whispered back. Then, withdrawing, taking his weight off Louis to look at him. "I do. And you know me."
Unfortunately, says a small, cracked smile. "Can we text still?"
Indulges himself with fingers skimming Lestat's cheek, cupping his face. A trade, as Lestat sitting up requires Louis to cede his toying with Lestat's hair.
"Text me. Call me."
And then, relenting a little, "Between the times I come see your shows."
A blurry line Louis is drawing here. Not all the shows, but some. Appearances periodically because Louis doesn't know how to stay away. He was away so long. So much time lost and wasted away. He can't stomach losing more, being fully out of contact.
Blurriness or not, there is relief that reads as much in Lestat's expression as the incremental adjustments of his posture. Transparent as stained glass. He would not like to perform knowing Louis would never be there. He would not like to cancel the tour, not really, for all that he complains about its demands. He would not truly like to go into the ground.
Not yet. Not while the Many bay for Louis' blood.
"Good," he says. Curling a hand around Louis' arm, still gentle. So many things he would like to say, each one more selfish than the last. Tries to find something that isn't so. "And you can text me. Call me."
Of course. He is not the one establishing distance between them. But all the same, he would like it if Louis did these things.
"About anything," he adds, voice still strung taut in his throat.
They'd talked for hours in New Orleans. Well into the dark, hours and hours of winding conversation. Louis had spent eighty years missing it. Missing him. Dreaming Lestat because he couldn't bear the absence of him.
So it's no hardship to say, "Yeah, okay."
They'll talk.
Thumb runs lightly over the scar. A second pass sweeping Lestat's lower lip in the process.
"Will you wait for me?" Louis asks, hesitant. Quiet. "Not asking you to stop fucking anyone you want. Just..."
Maybe he needs to tell Louis to stop touching him so, because it drives him fucking insane, and the impulse to do anything but try to encourage misbehaviour is severely undermined each time his body optimistically begins to redirect his blood flow. But of course, that would mean Louis probably respecting his wishes.
Which is unacceptable.
"What if you did?" he asks, a twitch at his mouth.
This twitch of Lestat's mouth prompts a slightly firmer press of Louis' thumb. Reflexive. Indulging while they are here in this room, alone, all of Lestat's staff unlikely to bother them.
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"Not saying that," Louis answers. Thinking about how they might hurt each other, again.
Is a fight going to heal what Louis fractured? Doubtful. Louis suspects it will tear a jagged wound into them both, too deep to stitch up properly.
Louis looks away, briefly. Jaw tightening, flexing around the first angry thing he wants to say.
"I'm compromising you. Fucking up your tour."
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Lestat keeps his arms loosely folded around himself once settled again, but closes his hands tighter. Like all he would like to do is reach for Louis in the wake of that little tense tic to his expression, of still soft words. Would like to pull him into his coffin, hold him, be held.
Aches for that. Like maybe it's at the core of all his stupid attempts for contact, for bites and fucking and whatever Louis might give him. Ugh, he can't stand himself.
"But I want you there," comes out anyway, thick with renewed feeling, renewed tears. "I don't know what I'm doing when I know you aren't watching."
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Or at least, leaning into the space this easing creates between them to give a little back.
"I wanna be here."
What else can he say? This is the truth.
"I want it too much."
A miserable flex of expression, almost a smile. Louis wants too much. Lestat of all people knows how that's liable to become something Louis shies away from. Something that becomes a thing he blames himself for.
He thought he could have it both ways. Have his distance, and have Lestat near too. But it feels impossible now, knowing what he knows. Knowing that it's just so easy to reach out and touch Lestat, to pin him down again.
Knowing that it would be temporary, when Louis wants it to be anything else.
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well, maybe so.
There is a silence after, also miserable, before he offers, "I didn't sleep with the photographer," for what it's worth.
Rolls slightly in his position to skim a tearful gaze up at the ceiling, a hand drifting to rub along his forehead, hairline, and then flop there to rest as if the idea of engaging muscle to resettle himself is too much to ask of him. "I only said it," he says, trying to iron out the quiver in his voice, "because I thought you wanted me to."
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That's an old game they play together. Old, old as their love. Louis baiting Lestat into the very worst behaviors, winding them both up to Louis can give in to him, give into wanting him.
Over a hundred years old, and there is still this defect in him, this shame. This part of Louis that wants to be wrestled into what he desires so he can absolve himself of all his shame. More complicated now, maybe, but not far removed from those early days. Looking at Lestat, feeling how desperately jealous he is now of anyone who had ever touched him, remembering the dizzying heights of desire he'd felt in the dressing room—
"I might've."
The right step in the game they were almost playing, before it became painful. Before Louis got too far into his head about all the realities of their situation.
"I didn't figure out I couldn't do it that way anymore until we started."
For a night, meaning nothing at all.
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a good thing, he thinks. Louis, protecting himself. Protecting them both. And also, not fucking with him for no reason. The ways it had felt like a strange punishment, and now doesn't.
Lestat nods his understanding. A little like defeat, but an acceptance of it.
Pointless to try to hold back tears when he is already in them, but he does his best at sounding reasonable when he asks, "Are you going to stay away for the rest?" The shows in New Orleans. The tour entire. Their lifetimes. Louis can take his pick.
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All those tour dates. All that lies beyond his tour, the kind of stardom that is already glowing around Lestat each time he steps on stage.
"I don't want to."
A starting point. Maybe the most important thing, yes? Saying that he wants to be here. Saying aloud what Louis had thought they both knew.
"But I think I'm fucking it up for you," Louis says softly. "And I don't wanna do that."
Lestat deserves all of this. Louis knows how much Lestat loves music, and remembers how he had thrived on a stage. He'd been right to be angry at Louis, in his dressing room, starting things, wanting too much.
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Near whispered, this protest. Another renewed grip to the edge of the coffin, Lestat finally pulling himself up to sit. A leaning forwards without permitting himself to actually make contact, hands anchored to the coffin edge, to the side of his own knee.
"It's mine to fuck up," he says, a little tinge of watery humour. "But even if it were you, there isn't—" His voice hitching, some exasperation in the way he catches his breath. "There isn't any purpose to it if you're not there. At least when you can be. When I know you will be waiting for me, that night or the next."
Maybe it's the same show over and over and Louis would not wish to attend it all the time. Not quite, at least. Different sets, songs swapped in and out, little spontaneous happenings, but it's the same tour, certainly. But if Louis were to quietly read a book in a backstage lounge to meet him after, that would be fine too.
Anything, after these past few days.
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But Lestat sits up, eyes wet, and tells Louis these things, gives him this mirror of his own longing. Wanting, and wanting, and wanting. And then beyond that, here is the very core of what Louis misses, yearns for: the link between them, the meaning it brings to every part of their lives.
Louis says nothing right away. The words settle between them. Tears slip down Lestat's face.
Slowly, slowly, Louis lifts a hand to lightly knuckle away a fresh spill of red from his cheek. And this small touch slips from the barest contact to Louis cupping his face, fingertips along the line of his jaw as his thumb strokes the cut of Lestat's cheekbone.
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Louis is going to tell him that they part ways properly. And Lestat will have to figure it out. Will have to test the truth of his statement, and find that there is at least one other purpose to the tour, to continue to piss off the vampiric world, to split its focus. That, at least, might sustain them for the east coast leg, maybe beyond it.
Or he could beg him not to go. There's still time. Still some pride to burn, against all odds. For now, settles in the silence rather than give into the urge to trample all over it.
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They could stay here, and Louis could touch him this way, and they can toss aside every other complicated part of this conversation. Of what they are trying to reason their way through. Of what Louis is trying to work his way towards.
But Louis owes him an answer. It's almost a foregone conclusion. How could Louis stay away? Another eighty years in exile? No. Neither of them could withstand it.
Lestat says nothing. Only makes a shattering sort of sound. Louis feels it under his palm.
It draws Louis in to him. He leans their foreheads together. Noses bump, brush. Louis exhales, inhales a deep breath, inhales Lestat, washed clean of arenas and stadiums and strange mortals.
The kiss is almost an exhale when it comes, a feather-light brush of lips to Lestat's mouth. Giving in. Choosing. Uncertain of exactly what, only that they have tried other options and they haven't worked.
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Doesn't matter too much, when there is only one thing he can and wants to do, which is slip back into that fractional space and kiss him in return. Still gentle and soft, tentative, as if asking: did Louis mean to do so? Is it good and allowed, that Lestat do it again?
He'd been so clumsy, in retrospect, whenever Louis permitted intimacy. Grasping, grabbing, desperate. Determined, in this moment, to be patient. Maybe it will last.
He wants to say a thousand things, ask a thousand questions. For now—
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Hesitance mellowing into familiar ease. They had spent so much time kissing, Louis remembers. Still remembers how it had led all things with them, how Louis had chosen him without any words at all, only by taking his face into his hands and kissing Lestat. This moment feels like an echo, like a continuation. Louis kisses him, hand gentle over Lestat's cheek as the kiss deepens.
They should have done this first. (Louis wasn't ready. He might still not be ready.) Maybe it would have been easier to throw Lestat around the room, touch him, fuck him, if they had something tender first.
Lestat is easily led. Louis coaxes his mouth open. Keeps his hand there caught beneath Lestat's. Kisses him for an eternity. For who knows how long.
And stays there, forehead resting against his, breathing together. Listening to twinned heartbeats, still keeping perfect time together after so long apart, so much discord, so much misalignment.
He'll say something. Soon.
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And now it isn't. The hand keeping Louis' in place slips further down, resting light at his wrist, encouraging without demand. His other has found a place to rest at Louis' other arm, fingers more yielding than grabbing. Like holding a butterfly, where nothing you can do will stop it from flying away without destroying it.
Relaxes a little, at least bodily. Listing into the side of his coffin, resting there against Louis, soaking in these moments of gentle contact with the same relief he had felt when Louis had found him, taken him into his arms.
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Louis used to thumb over it. Each time he cradled Lestat's face, he'd set his thumb there, guide him into a kiss.
A passing urge to do only that. Kiss him until someone came to fetch Lestat, and Louis had to—
Go?
It's the question he must decide. That Lestat had been asking.
"I can't stay away from you," he whispers. Amends to, "I don't want to. But I gotta spend a little time on my own. I ain't good for you this way. I'm still trying to figure out what's mine and what I gotta throw away."
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But Louis is talking and Lestat is listening, which he hopes is the correct thing to do, even as he does it with big glittering wet eyes that betray a propensity to hurt his own feelings on something. When Louis finishes his part, Lestat lowers his gaze to absorb it better. Can't stay away, don't want to, gotta.
Shifts aside, resting his jaw and cheek on Louis' shoulder, looking out unseeing at the room. The unpacked luggage, the fluttering curtain. A little time on his own, Louis says. Lestat feels as though his heart is bleeding out into his chest, blood settling in his belly.
"And you can't do that with me around?"
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Feels like a fair question, even for all the ways Louis has withheld, veiled the extent to which Armand had—
Changed him. Louis has been changed. (Does not assign any other word to their life together.) Nearly eighty years, and what is left of Louis? What is his? What had been planted in him? What is a defect in Louis, one he came by honestly, and need excise?
Who is he without Armand? Without Lestat? Without either of them?
Hesitantly, Louis threads fingers into Lestat's hair. Strokes down his scalp to his nape and back again as Lestat rests his head. As Louis puts this question to him.
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Gentle. Resigned.
Louis, stating he needs something. It's hard to deny him anything, and this is true of things that run counter to what Lestat desires most. He could throw a tantrum, or just open his mouth and let everything he wishes to say tumble out. How desperately alone he feels. How he can make things better for Louis, including himself. How fearful he is of another eighty years slipping by.
Can't feel soothed for the hand in his hair, though he wants to be. Still, it's nice enough to linger. Washed of products and, to his eye, a little lank for it. To touch, though, the mix of strawberry blonde and platinum highlights are softer than usual.
Shifts. Balances his chin there on Louis' shoulder. "What do you need, mon cher?"
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It sparks such a complicated rush of feeling. Affection for how easy Lestat offers it. Misery, for how it confirms what Louis knows he needs.
If they lean into each other, Louis will take all of the wreckage and let it calcify. It'd be so easy to just be with Lestat, to be all broken pieces and grow into him, never excavate what eighty years away had made of him.
Here, now, Louis allows himself the luxury of his fingers in Lestat's hand. He can still taste him.
"I don't know myself anymore," Louis whispers. "I got back all these pieces of myself and I don't know where they fit."
The first time Louis has said this aloud in so many words. Has spun for fight to fight, amassing wealth, artwork, flexing his own power, but in the wake of it all there's this. Uncertainty. Wreckage.
"I just need time. Can't be anyone's companion this way."
Anyone's. Might as well say Lestat. Daniel would be exasperated, rolling his eyes about Louis leaving this open-ended as if there's anyone else.
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It makes him shiver, just once, the non-impossibility of Louis finding someone else as he finds himself. Someone without all this history and pain and disaster, someone who doesn't toy with him or need him so desperately he could dissolve into ash. It all feels too far away for Lestat to get his jaws around now. Maybe later.
Let me help, he wishes he could say. Don't burn anything, but let me help. Lestat, feeling at times like a man on his knees in the wilderness, hands cupped around a struggling flame, willing it to live, to burn brighter. Louis who needs time, not him. His desperate love.
"I know you," whispered back. Then, withdrawing, taking his weight off Louis to look at him. "I do. And you know me."
Unfortunately, says a small, cracked smile. "Can we text still?"
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Quickly.
Indulges himself with fingers skimming Lestat's cheek, cupping his face. A trade, as Lestat sitting up requires Louis to cede his toying with Lestat's hair.
"Text me. Call me."
And then, relenting a little, "Between the times I come see your shows."
A blurry line Louis is drawing here. Not all the shows, but some. Appearances periodically because Louis doesn't know how to stay away. He was away so long. So much time lost and wasted away. He can't stomach losing more, being fully out of contact.
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Not yet. Not while the Many bay for Louis' blood.
"Good," he says. Curling a hand around Louis' arm, still gentle. So many things he would like to say, each one more selfish than the last. Tries to find something that isn't so. "And you can text me. Call me."
Of course. He is not the one establishing distance between them. But all the same, he would like it if Louis did these things.
"About anything," he adds, voice still strung taut in his throat.
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So it's no hardship to say, "Yeah, okay."
They'll talk.
Thumb runs lightly over the scar. A second pass sweeping Lestat's lower lip in the process.
"Will you wait for me?" Louis asks, hesitant. Quiet. "Not asking you to stop fucking anyone you want. Just..."
Be there. Not to forget him.
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Which is unacceptable.
"What if you did?" he asks, a twitch at his mouth.
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"Ask you to stop fucking other people?"
Clarifying. A little doubtful.
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